The Beta Unit

posted 2007-05-31 18:19:59
by Chase Tingley

One of my favorite movies as a kid was The Last Starfighter, a slightly obscure sci-fi epic about a teenager named Alex who mastered a particular video game, only to discover that the game was a test to identify potential recruits into a sort of intergalactic Air Force that defended the galaxy. One concept from the film that stuck with me was that of the "Beta unit", an android stand-in that took Alex's place on earth while he was off fighting aliens. The running joke was that the Beta unit looked and sounded just like Alex, but he wasn't very bright and was a bit of a klutz. In one memorable scene, the Beta unit developed a mysterious buzzing in one ear, prompting him to remove his own head and go to work on it with a screwdriver.

On a completely unrelated note, many customers have by now received a beta release of WorldServer 9. The beta release should look and behave exactly like the final release, except when it doesn't. There are many bugs and issues that have been discovered in it, and most of them are already fixed in more recently nightly builds. We're working on releasing a "Beta 2" version of WorldServer 9, which contains the fruits of these labors. If you've been playing with the original Beta -- or even if you downloaded it but never had time to try it out -- there's still time to have an impact on the release by providing feedback on particular features, reporting bugs, etc. We hope to hear from you!

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